The other day, I was in my mother’s apartment trying to watch television. The remote could not change the channel. The television was stuck on the USA Network—a Fast and Furious movie was playing—and I could not watch anything else. The volume, for reasons entirely unclear, did work. I could turn the television on and off and increase or decrease the volume but perform no other actions. Spectrum, the cable provider, wasn’t terribly helpful, giving instructions about “reprogramming” the remote that wouldn’t end up making any difference. At one point, I asked if it was possible to change the channel on the cable box and immediately knew, as I eyed the television, that was the wrong question to ask. This was a smart TV. There was no way to change the channel without a remote. Spectrum said they would mail a new remote to my mother’s apartment. It occurred to me, as a child growing up in this apartment, it was actually much easier to watch television in the 1990s and 2000s. Back then, I pointed the remote and the screen turned on. The remote only failed if the battery died. If, for some reason, the remote had dead batteries and I couldn’t replace them, I could wander up to the box and keep pressing buttons until I got to the station I wanted. Calling up the cable company to fix a remote would have been absurd.
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